How to Transform a College with One Uniform Curriculum into a University

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, The Elective System, 1885

How to transform a college with one uniform curriculum into a university
without any prescribed course of study at all is a problem which more
and more claims the attention of all thoughtful friends of American
learning and education. To-night I hope to convince you that a university
of liberal arts and sciences must give its students three things: (1)
Freedom in choice of studies, (2) Opportunity to win academic distinction
in single subjects or special lines of study, (3) A Discipline which
distinctly imposes on each individual the responsibility of forming
his own habits and guiding his own conduct. These three subjects I shall
take up in succession, the first of them taking the greater part of
the time allotted me.

1. Of freedom in choice of studies.

Let me first present what I may call a mechanical argument on this subject.
A college with a prescribed curriculum must provide, say, sixteen hours
a week of instruction for each class, or sixty-four hours a week in
all for the four classes, without allowing for repetitions of lectures
or lessons. Six or eight teachers can easily give all the instruction
needed in such a college, if no repetitions are necessary. If the classes
are so large that they need to be divided into two or more sections,
more teachers must be employed. If a few extra or optional studies,
outside of the curriculum, are provided, a further addition to the number
of teachers must be made. Twenty teachers would, however, be a liberal
allowance for any college of this type; and accordingly there are hundreds
of American colleges at this moment with less than twenty teachers all
told. Under the prescribed system it would be impossible for such a
college to find work for more teachers, if it had them. Now there are
eighty teachers employed this year in Harvard College, exclusive of
laboratory assistants; and these eighty teachers give about four hundred
and twenty-five hours of public instruction a week without any repetitions,
not counting the very important instruction which many of them give
in laboratories. It is impossible for any undergraduate in his four
years to take more than a tenth part of the instruction given by the
College; and since four fifth of this instruction is of a higher grade
than any which can be given in a college with a prescribed curriculum,
a diligent student would need about forty years to cover the present
field; and during those years the field would enlarge quite beyond his
powers of occupation. Since the student cannot take the whole of the
instruction offered, it seems to be necessary to allow him to take a
part. A college must either limit closely its teaching, or provide some
mode of selecting studies for the individual student. The limitation
of teaching is an intolerable alternative for any institution which
aspires to become a university; for a university must try to teach every
subject, above the grade of its admission requirements, for which there
is any demand; and to teach it thoroughly enough to carry the advanced
student to the confines of present knowledge, and make him capable of
original research. These are the only limits which a university can
properly set to its instruction-except indeed those rigorous limits
which poverty imposes. The other alternative is selection or election
of studies.

The elective system at Harvard has been sixty years in developing, and
during fourteen of these years-from 1846 to 1860-the presidents and
the majority of the faculty were not in favor of it; but they could
find no way of escape from the dilemma which I have set before you.
They could not deliberately reduce the amount of instruction offered,
and election of studies in some degree was the inevitable alternative.

The practical question then is, At what age, and at what stage of his
educational progress, can an American boy be offered free choice of
studies? Or, in other words, At what age can an American boy best go
to a free university? Before answering this question I will ask your
attention to four preliminary observations.

The European boy goes to free universities at various ages from
seventeen to twenty; and the American boy is decidedly more mature
and more capable of taking care of himself than the European boy of
like age.

The change from school to university ought to be made as soon as
it would be better for the youth to associate with older students
under a discipline suited to their age, than with younger pupils under
a discipline suited to theirs-as soon, in short, as it would be better
for the youth to be the youngest student in a university than the
oldest boy in a school. The school might still do much for the youth;
the university may as yet be somewhat too free for him: there must
be a balancing of advantages against disadvantages; but the wise decision
is to withdraw him betimes from a discipline which he is outgrowing,
and put him under a discipline which he is to grow up to. When we
think of putting boy into college, our imaginations are apt to dwell
upon the occasional and exceptional evil influences to which his new
freedom will expose him, more than upon those habitual and prevailing
influences of college companionship which will nourish his manliness
and develop his virtue; just as we are apt to think of heredity chiefly
as a means of transmitting vices and diseases, whereas it is normally
the means of transmitting and accumulating infinitely various virtues
and serviceable capacities.

A young man is much affected by the expectations which his elders
entertain of him. If they expect him to behave like a child, his lingering
childishness will oftener rule his actions; if they expect him to
behave like a man, his incipient manhood will oftener assert itself.
The pretended parental or sham monastic regime of the common American
college seems to me to bring out the childishness rather than the
manliness of the average student; as it evidenced by the pranks he
plays, the secret societies in which he rejoices, and the barbarous
or silly customs which he accepts and transmits. The conservative
argument is: a college must deal with the student as he is; he will
be what he has been, namely, a thoughtless, aimless, lazy, and possibly
vicious boy; therefore a policy which gives him liberty is impracticable.
The progressive argument is: adapt college policy to the best students,
and not to the worst; improve the policy, and in time the evil fruits
of a mistaken policy will disappear. I would only urge at this point
that a far-seeing educational policy must be based upon potentialities
as well as actualities, upon things which may be reasonably hoped
for, planned, and aimed at, as well as upon things which are.

The condition of secondary education is an important factor in our
problem. It is desirable that the young men who are to enjoy university
freedom should have already received at school a substantial training,
in which the four great subdivisions of elementary knowledge-languages,
history, mathematics, and natural science-were all adequately represented;
but it must be admitted that this desirable training is now given
in very few schools, and that in many parts of the country there are
not secondary schools enough of even tolerable quality. For this condition
of secondary education the colleges are in part responsible; for they
have produced few good teachers, except for the ancient languages;
and they have required for admission to college hardly anything but
the elements of Greek, Latin, and mathematics. But how should this
condition of things affect the policy of an institution which sees
its way to obtain a reasonable number of tolerably prepared students:
Shall we stop trying to create a university because the condition
of secondary education in the country at large is unsatisfactory?
The difficulty with that policy of inaction is that the reform and
development of secondary education depend upon the right organization
and conduct of universities. It is the old problem: Which was first
created, an egg or a hen? In considering the relation of college life
to school life, many people are confused by a misleading metaphor-that
of a building. They say to themselves: on weak foundations no strong
superstructure can be built; schools lay the foundations on which
the university must build; therefore, if preparatory schools fail
to do good work, no proper university work can subsequently be done.
The analogy seems perfect, but has this fatal defect: education is
a vital process, not a mechanical one. Let us, therefore, use an illustration
drawn from a vital function, that of nutrition. A child has had poor
milk as an infant, and is not well developed; therefore, when its
teeth are cut, and it is ready for bread, meat, and oatmeal, you are
to hold back this substantial diet, and give it the sweetened milk
and water, and Mellin's Food, which would have suited it when a baby.
The mental food of a boy has not been as nourishing and abundant as
it should have been at school; therefore when he goes to college or
university his diet must be that which he should have had at school,
but missed. Education involves growth or development from within in
every part; and metaphors drawn from the process of laying one stone
upon another are not useful in educational discussions. Harvard College
now finds itself able to get nearly three hundred tolerably prepared
students every year from one hundred or more schools and private tutors
scattered over the country; and she is only just beginning to reap
the fruit of the changes in her own policy and discipline which the
past eighteen years have wrought. Schools follow universities, and
will be what universities make them.

With these preliminary suggestions I proceed to answer the question,
At what age can an American boy best go to a university where choice
of studies is free? and to defend my answer. I believe the normal age
under reasonably favorable conditions to be eighteen. In the first place,
I hold that the temperament, physical constitution, mental aptitudes,
and moral quality of a boy are all well determined by the time he is
eighteen years old. The potential man is already revealed. His capacities
and incapacities will be perfectly visible to his teacher, or to any
observant and intimate friend, provided that his studies at school have
been fairly representative. If his historical studies have been limited
to primers of Greek, Roman, and American history, his taste and capacity
for historical study will not be known either to his teacher or to himself;
if he has had no opportunity to study natural science, his powers in
that direction will be quite unproved; but if the school course has
been reasonably comprehensive, there need be no doubt as to the most
profitable direction of his subsequent studies. The boys future will
depend greatly upon the influences, happy or unhappy, to which he is
subjected; but given all favorable influences, his possibilities are
essentially determined. The most fortunate intellectual influences will
be within his reach, if he has liberty to choose the mental food which
he can best assimilate. Secondly, at eighteen the American boy has passed
the age when a compulsory external discipline is useful. Motives and
inducements may be set vividly before him; he may be told that he must
do so and so in order to win something which he desires or values; prizes
and rewards near or remote may be held out to him; but he cannot be
driven to any useful exercise of his mind. Thirdly, a well-instructed
youth of eighteen can select for himself-not for any other boy, or for
the fictitious universal boy but for himself alone-a better course of
study than any college faculty, or any wise man who does not know him
and his ancestors and his previous life, can possibly select for him.
In choosing his course he will naturally seek aid from teachers and
friends who have intimate knowledge of him, and he will act under the
dominion of that intense conservatism which fortunately actuates civilized
man in the whole matter of education, and under various other safeguards
which nature and not arbitrary regulation provides. When a young man
whom I never saw before asks me what studies he had better take in college,
I am quite helpless, until he tells me what he likes and what he dislikes
to study, what kinds of exertion are pleasurable to him, what sports
he cares for, what reading interests him, what his parents and grandparents
were in the world, and what he means to be. In short, I can only show
him how to think out the problem for himself with such lights as he
has and nobody else can have. The proposition that a boy of eighteen
can choose his own studies, with the natural helps, more satisfactorily
than anybody else can choose them for him, seems at first sight absurd;
but I believe it to be founded upon the nature of things, and it is
also for me a clear result of observation. I will state first the argument
from the nature of things, and then describe my own observations.

Every youth of eighteen is an infinitely complex organization, the duplicate
of which neither does nor ever will exist. His inherited traits are
different from those of every other human being; his environment has
been different from that of every other child; his passions, emotions,
hopes, and desires were never before associated in any other creature
just as they are in him; and his will-force is aroused, stimulated,
exerted, and exhausted in ways wholly his own. The infinite variety
of form and feature, which we know human bodies to be capable of, presents
but a faint image of the vastly deeper diversities of the minds and
characters which are lodged in these unlike shells. To discern and take
due account of these diversities no human insight or wisdom is sufficient,
unless the spontaneous inclinations, natural preferences, and easiest
habitual activities of each individual are given play. It is for the
happiness of the individual and the benefit of society alike that these
mental diversities should be cultivated, not suppressed. The individual
enjoys most that intellectual labor for which he is most fit; and society
is best served when every man's peculiar skill, faculty, or aptitude
is developed and utilized to the highest possible degree. The presumption
is, therefore, against uniformity in education, and in favor of diversity
at the earliest possible moment. What determines that moment? To my
thinking, the limit of compulsory uniform instruction should be determined
by the elementary quality and recognized universal utility of the subjects
of such instruction. For instance, it is unquestionable that every child
needs to know how to read, write, and, to a moderate extent, cipher.
Therefore primary schools may have a uniform programme. One might naturally
suppose that careful study of the mother-tongue and its literature would
be considered a uniform need for all youth; but as a matter of fact
there is no agreement to this effect. The English language and literature
have hardly yet won a place for themselves in American schools. Only
the elements of two foreign languages and the elements of algebra and
geometry can be said to be generally recognized as indispensable to
the proper training of all young people who are privileged to study
beyond their seventeenth year. There is no consent as to the uniform
desirableness of the elements of natural science, and there is much
difference of opinion about the selection of the two foreign languages,
the majority of educated people supposing two dead languages to be preferable,
a minority thinking that living languages are permissible. The limit
of that elementary knowledge, of which by common consent all persons
who are to be highly educated stand in need, is therefore a narrow one,
easily to be reached and passed, under respectable instruction, by any
youth of fair ability before he is eighteen years old. There, at least,
ceases justifiable uniformity in education. There, at least, election
of studies should begin; and the safest guides to a wise choice will
be the taste, inclination, and special capacity of each individual.
When it comes to the choice of a profession, everybody knows that the
only wisdom is to follow inclination. In my view, the only wisdom in
determining those liberal studies which may be most profitably pursued
after eighteen is to follow inclination. Hence it is only the individual
youth who can select that course of study which will most profit him,
because it will most interest him. The very fact of choice goes far
to secure the cooperation of his will.

I have already intimated that there exist certain natural guides and
safeguards for every youth who is called upon in a free university to
choose his own studies. Let us see what these natural aids are. In the
first place, he cannot help taking up a subject which he has already
studied about where he left it off, and every new subject at the beginning
and not at the middle. Secondly, many subjects taught at the university
involve other subjects, which must therefore be studied first. Thus,
no one can get far in physics without being familiar with trigonometry
and analytic geometry; chemical analysis presupposes acquaintance with
general chemistry, and paleontology acquaintance with botany and zoology;
no one can study German philosophy to advantage unless he can read German,
and no student can profitably discuss practical economic problems until
he has mastered the elementary principles of political economy. Every
advanced course, whether in language, philosophy, history, mathematics,
or science, presupposes acquaintance with some elementary course or
courses. Thirdly, there is a prevailing tendency on the part of every
competent student to carry far any congenial subject once entered upon.
To repress this most fortunate tendency is to make real scholarship
impossible. So effective are these natural safeguards against fickleness
and inconsecutiveness in the choice of studies, that artificial regulation
is superfluous.

I give, in the next place, some results of my own observation upon the
working of an elective system; and that you may have my credentials
before you I will describe briefly my opportunities of observation.
I had experience as an undergraduate of a college course almost wholly
required; for I happened upon nearly the lowest stage to which the elective
system in Harvard College ever fell, after its initiation in 1825. During
the nine years from 1854 to 1863 I became intimately acquainted with
the working of this mainly prescribed curriculum from the point of view
of a tutor and assistant professor who had a liking for administrative
details. After a separation from the University of six years, two of
which were spent in Europe as a student and four at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology as a professor, I went back as president in
1869 to find a tolerably broad elective system already under way. The
wishes of the governing boards and external circumstances all favoring
it, the system was rapidly developed. Required studies were gradually
abolished or pushed back; so that first the Senior year was made completely
elective, then the Junior, then the Sophomore, and finally in June last
the Freshman year was made chiefly elective. No required studies now
remain except the writing of English, the elements of either French
or German (one of these two languages being required for admission),
and a few lectures on chemistry and physics. None of the former exclusive
staples, Greek, Latin, mathematics, logic, and metaphysics, are required,
and no particular combinations or selections of courses are recommended
by the faculty. I have therefore had ample opportunity to observe at
Harvard the working of almost complete prescription, of almost complete
freedom, and of all intermediate methods. In Europe I studied the free
university method; and at the Institute of Technology I saw the system-excellent
for technical schools-of several well-defined courses branching from
a common stock of uniformly prescribed studies.

The briefest form in which I can express the general result of my observation
is this: I have never known a student of any capacity to select for
himself a set of studies covering four years which did not apparently
possess more theoretical and practical merit for his case than the required
curriculum of my college days. Every prescribed curriculum is necessarily
elementary from beginning to end, and very heterogeneous. Such is the
press of subjects that no one subject can possibly be carried beyond
its elements; no teacher, however learned and enthusiastic, can have
any advanced pupils; and no scholar, however competent and eager, can
make serious attainments in any single subject. Under an elective system
the great majority of students use their liberty to pursue some subject
or subjects with a reasonable degree of thoroughness. This concentration
upon single lines develops advanced teaching, and results in a general
raising of the level of instruction. Students who have decided taste
for any particular subject wisely devote a large part of their time
to that subject and its congeners. Those who have already decided upon
their profession wisely choose subjects which are related to, or underlie,
their future professional studies; thus, the future physician will advantageously
give a large share of his college course to French, German, chemistry,
physics, and biology; while the future lawyer will study logic, ethics,
history, political economy, and the use of English in argumentative
writing and speaking. Among the thousands of individual college courses
determined by the choice of the student in four successive years, which
the records of Harvard College now preserve, it is rare to find one
which does not exhibit an intelligible sequence of studies. It should
be understood in this connection that all the studies which are allowed
to count toward the A.B. at Harvard are liberal or pure, no technical
or professional studies being admissible.

Having said thus much about the way in which an American student will
use freedom in the choice of studies, I desire to point out that a young
American must enjoy the privileges of university life between eighteen
and twenty-two, if at all. From two thirds to three fourths of college
graduates go into professions or employments which require of them elaborate
special preparation. The medical student needs four years of professional
training, the law student at least three, the good teacher and the skilful
architect quite as much. Those who enter the service of business corporations,
or go into business for themselves, have the business to learn-a process
which ordinarily takes several years. If a young man takes his A.B.
at twenty-two, he can hardly hope to begin the practice of his profession
before he is twenty-six. That is quite late enough. It is clearly impossible,
therefore, that the American university should be constructed on top
of the old-fashioned American college. The average Freshman at Harvard
is eighteen and two thirds years old when he enters, and at the majority
of colleges he is older still. For the next three or four years he must
have freedom to choose among liberal studies, if he is ever to enjoy
that inestimable privilege.

Two common objections to an elective system shall next have our attention.
The first is often put in the form of a query. Election of studies may
be all very well for conscientious or ambitious students, or for those
who have a strong taste for certain studies; but what becomes under
such a system, of the careless, indifferent, lazy boys who have no bent
or intellectual ambition of any sort? I answer with a similar query:
What became of such boys under the uniform compulsory system? Did they
get any profit to speak of under that regime? Not within my observation.
It really does not make much difference what these unawakened minds
dawdle with. There is, however, much more chance that such young men
will get aroused from their lethargy under an elective system than under
a required. When they follow such faint promptings of desire as they
feel, they at least escape the sense of grievance and repugnance which
an arbitrary assignment to certain teachers and certain studies often
creates. An elective system does not mean liberty to do nothing. The
most indifferent student must pass a certain number of examinations
every year. He selects perhaps those subjects in which he thinks he
can pass the best examinations within the smallest amount of labor;
but in those very subjects the instruction will be on a higher plane
than it can ever reach under a compulsory system, and he will get more
benefit from them than he would from other subjects upon which he put
the same amount of labor but attained less success. It is an important
principle in education, from primary school to university, that the
greater the visible attainment for a given amount of labor the better;
and this rule applies quite forcibly to a weak student as to a strong
one. Feeble or inert students are considerably influenced in choosing
their studies by the supposed quality of the teachers whom they will
meet. As a rule they select the very teachers who are likely to have
the most influence with them, being guided by traditions received from
older students of their sort. It is the unanimous opinion of the teachers
at Cambridge that more and better work is got from this class of students
under the elective system than was under the required.

Having said thus much about the effects of free choice of studies upon
the unpromising student, I must add that the policy of an institution
of education, of whatever grade, ought never to be determined by the
needs of the least capable students; and that a university should aim
at meeting the wants of the best students at any rate, and the wants
of inferior students only so far as it can meet them without impairing
the privileges of the best. A uniform curriculum, by enacting superficiality
and prohibiting thoroughness, distinctly sacrifices the best scholars
to the average. Free choice of studies gives the young genius the fullest
scope without impairing the chances of the drone and the dullard.

The second objection with which I wish to deal is this: free choice
implies that there are no studies which are recognized as of supreme
merit, so that every young man unquestionably ought to pursue them,
Can this be? Is it possible that the accumulated wisdom of the race
cannot prescribe with certainty the studies which will best develop
the human mind in general between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two?
At first it certainly seems strange that we have to answer no; but when
we reflect how very brief the acquaintance of the race has been with
the great majority of the subjects which are now taught in a university
the negative answer seems less surprising. Out of the two hundred courses
of instruction which stand on the list of Harvard University this year
it would be difficult to select twenty which could have been given at
the beginning of this century with the illustrations, materials, and
methods now considered essential to the educational quality of the course.
One realizes more easily this absence of accumulated experience on considering
that all the natural sciences, with comparative philology, political
economy, and history, are practically new subjects, that all mathematics
is new except the elements of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, that
the recent additions to ethics and metaphysics are of vast extent, and
that the literatures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have
great importance in several European languages. The materials and methods
of university education always have been, and always will be, changing
from generation to generation. We think, perhaps with truth, that the
nineteenth century has been a period of unprecedented growth and progress;
but every century has probably witnessed an unprecedented advance in
civilization, simply because the process is cumulative, if no catastrophes
arrest it. It is one of the most important functions of universities
to store up the accumulated knowledge of the race, and so to use these
stores that each successive generation of youth shall start with all
the advantages which their predecessors have won. Therefore a university,
while not neglecting the ancient treasures of learning, has to keep
a watchful eye upon the new fields of discovery, and has to invite its
students to walk in new-made as well as in long-trodden paths. Concerning
the direct educational influence of all these new subjects the race
cannot be said to have much accumulated wisdom.

One presumption of considerable scope may, however, be said to be established
by experience. In every new field of knowledge the mental powers of
the adventurers and discoverers found full play and fruitful exercise.
Some rare human mind or minds must have laboriously developed each new
subject of study. It may fairly be presumed that the youth will find
some strenuous exercise of his faculties in following the masters into
any field which it taxed their utmost powers to explore and describe.
To study the conquests of great minds in any field of knowledge must
be good training for young minds of kindred tastes and powers. That
all branches of sound knowledge are of equal dignity and equal educational
value for mature students is the only hopeful and tenable view in our
day. Long ago it became quite impossible for one mind to compass more
than an insignificant fraction of the great sum of acquired knowledge.

Before I leave the subject of election of studies, let me point out
that there is not a university of competent resources upon the continent
of Europe in which complete freedom of studies has not long prevailed;
and that Oxford and Cambridge have recently provided an almost complete
liberty for their students. In our own country respectable colleges
now offer a considerable proportion of elective studies, and as a rule
the greater their resources in teachers, collections, and money, the
more liberal their application of the elective principle. Many colleges,
however, still seem to have but a halting faith in the efficacy of the
principle, and our educated public has but just begun to appreciate
its importance. So fast as American institutions acquire the resources
and powers of European universities, they will adopt the methods proper
to universities wherever situate. At present our best colleges fall
very far short of European standards in respect to number of teachers,
and consequently to amplitude of teaching.

As yet we have no university in America-only aspirants to that eminence.
All the more important is it that we should understand the conditions
under which a university can be developed-the most indispensable of
which is freedom in choice of studies.

2. A university must give its students opportunity to win distinction
in special subjects or lines of study.

The uniform curriculum led to a uniform degree, the first scholar and
the last receiving the same diploma. A university cannot be developed
on that plan. It must provide academic honors at graduation for distinguished
attainments in single subjects. These honors encourage students to push
far on single lines; whence arises a demand for advanced instruction
in all departments in which honors can be won, and this demand, taken
in connection with the competition which naturally springs up between
different departments, stimulates the teachers, who in turn stimulate
their pupils. The elaborate directions given by each department to candidates
for honors are so many definite pieces of advice to students who wish
to specialize their work. It is an incidental advantage of the system
that the organization of departments of instruction is promoted by it.
The teachers of Latin, of history, or of philosophy, find it necessary
to arrange their courses in orderly sequence, to compare their methods
and their results, and to enrich and diversify as much as possible the
instruction which they collectively offer. Many European universities,
but especially the English, offer honors, or prizes, or both of these
inducements, for distinguished merit in specialties; and the highly
valued degree of Ph.D. in Germany is a degree given for large attainments
in one or two branches of knowledge, with mention of the specialty.
The Harvard faculty announced their system of honors in 1866-67, and
they certainly never passed a more effective piece of legislation. In
1879 they devised a lesser distinction at graduation called honorable
mention, which has also worked very well. To get honors in any department
ordinarily requires a solid year and a half's work; to get honorable
mention requires about half that time. The important function of all
such devices is to promote specialization of work and therefore to develop
advanced instruction. It is unnecessary to point out how absolutely
opposed to such a policy the uniform prescription of a considerable
body of elementary studies must be.

3. A university must permit its students, in the main, to govern themselves.

It must have a large body of students, else many of the numerous courses
of highly specialized instruction will find no hearers, and the students
themselves will not feel that very wholesome influence which comes from
observation of and contact with large numbers of young men from different
nations, States, schools, families, sects, parties, and condition of
life. In these days a university is best placed in or near the seat
of a considerable population; so that its officers and students can
always enjoy the various refined pleasures, and feel alike the incitements
and the restraints, of a highly cultivated society. The universities
of Rome, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Leipsic, Christiania, Madrid, and Edinburgh
forcible illustrate both of these advantages. These conditions make
it practically impossible for a university to deal with its students
on any principle of seclusion, either in a village or behind walls and
bars. Fifteen hundred able-bodied young men living in buildings whose
doors stand open night and day, or in scattered lodging-houses, cannot
be mechanically protected from temptations at the university any more
than at the homes from which they came.

Their protection must be within them. They must find it in memory
of home, in pure companionship, in hard work, in intellectual ambition,
religious sentiment, and moral purpose. A sense of personal freedom
and responsibility reinforces these protecting influences, which the
existence of a supervising authority claiming large powers which it
has no effective means of exercising weakens them. The in loco parentis
theory is an ancient fiction which ought no longer to deceive anybody.
No American college, wherever situated, possesses any method of discipline
which avails for the suppression or exclusion of vice. The vicious student
can find all means of indulgence in the smallest village, and the worst
vices are the stillest. It is a distinct advantage of the genuine university
method that it does not pretend to maintain any parental or monastic
discipline over its students, but frankly tells them that they must
govern themselves. The moral purpose of a university's policy should
be to train young men to self-control and self-reliance through liberty.
It is not the business of a university to train men for those functions
in which implicit obedience is of the first importance. On the contrary,
it should train men for those occupations in which self-government,
independence, and originating power are preeminently needed. Let no
one imagine that a young man is in peculiar moral danger at an active
and interesting university. Far from it. Such a university is the safest
place in the world for young men who have anything in them-far safer
than counting-room, shop, factory, farm, barrack, forecastle, or ranch.
The student lives in a bracing atmosphere; books engage him; good companionships
invite him; good occupations defend him; helpful friends surround him;
pure ideals are held up before him; ambition spur him; honor beckons
him.